Welcome Home, Uncle Joey!

Today our family was doubly blessed. First, it started off with Daddy’s brother and his family arriving from SC. OMG, I almost said Vermont 😉 Nope, they now live in SC. We don’t get to see them too often and in fact, Uncle Mike hasn’t been to Florida since our wedding, almost 5 years ago. So we were stoked to have them over for a family BBQ, along with Elizabeth and Paul (the boys cousins), Grandma and Papa, Grandma, Popi, and GG, and Aunt Dana, Howie, and Uncle Joey.

Uncle Joey landed in Tampa from his year long duty over in Bahrain at 3:30pm and arrived promptly at our house at 4:30pm for some dinner. He was exhausted as I’m sure you can imagine. The 21 hour flight is no walk in the park, and being on mostly military flights makes it even longer and harder. But he survived and we are so happy to have him home.

Ethan didn’t know what quit to think of all these new faces in our home. He was a bit nervous at first, clinging to Mommy as usual, but soon after he was crusin’ around looking for anyone to read to him or feed him 🙂 Elizabeth is such a wonderful big cousin, she had ALL their attentions captured during her story time.

Aunt Dana and Howie just arrived home from Bahrain as well. They went over there to visit Uncle Joey for his last 2 weeks in that country and well lets just say that Howie missed his cousins terribly 🙂 He sure knows how to show the love….meanwhile in the background you can see Ashton pouting. 3 year olds, I tell ya! But then he came around and had to show Howie up…these two boys…they really are going to make us work!

Ashton is bonding with Elizabeth. This is as close to her as he would get, for now. Just wait, tomorrow we’ll be with them all day and then Wednesday we’ll be going to SeaWorld with them…I’m sure I’ll have pictures of him begging for Elizabeth to hold his hand or read to him or play something with him. Besides the shot of Elizabeth reading to the kids and the video, I didn’t get any photos of Paul, our 6 year old nephew. Can I just tell you how tall he is? Yeah, he is an “R” that is for sure. He is almost as tall as his 9 year old sister (who is no shrimp herself) and gosh, I feel like the next time we see him, he just might be as tall as me. How does this happen? I promise, on Easter (well, that is technically right now) I will get a better photo of him. Maybe I’ll even get a photo of all of us, that is if I can round up a neighbor that would be willing to help us out with that.

As for now, I better get back to bed if I want that Bunny to come visit. From what I’ve been told, he doesn’t come when people are awake, and I know 2 little boys who would be very sad if the Easter Bunny missed our house 😦